1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to plastic gourd-shaped housing for use in attracting purple martins to nest.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Purple martins started nesting in natural gourds a long time ago. Many purple martin “landlords” believe that the shape of the gourds still appeals to the birds more strongly than any other type of martin house. But natural gourds are expensive to buy, laborious to prepare and hard to clean out. Hence natural gourds are not preferred by most purple martin “landlords.”
There are plastic gourds which address some of the problems associated with natural gourds. One such product is a one-piece, blow molded gourd that is sold under the trademark SuperGourd. The SuperGourd has drainage holes in the bottom and a threaded access port. One problem with the SuperGourd is that the inside of the nest is slick. Some think that abnormalities may develop if the baby purple martins slip while moving about in the nesting compartment. Another problem with the SuperGourd is that the access port is round and when a nest camera is inserted through the cap it is difficult to thread the cap on the access port such that the camera is right-side-up. The SuperGourd is also hard to clean out.
There are also plastic gourds which are molded in sections. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,783,831 to Patliff which describes a two-piece plastic gourd for purple martins formed of mating upper and lower sections. The Patliff gourd, however, has no access port such that it difficult for a “landlord” to do nest checks. Commercially a two-piece plastic gourd divided along a vertical plane into a front half with an access opening and a closed rear half is sold by Carroll Industries. This product, like the Patliff gourd, has drainage holes in the bottom and no access port. Another two-piece plastic gourd is sold under the tradename Natureline. This gourd is like the gourd sold by Carroll Industries except that the company offers different snap-in door assemblies such that the “landlord” has a choice of hole shapes. Removal of the door assembly also makes clean out of the nesting compartment easier. The Natureline gourd has a vent cap cover which can be lifted for ventilation but, like the gourd sold by Carroll Industries, no access port. While the vent cap improves ventilation when it is open, it also admits rain which may result in a loss of the featherless baby martins if they become chilled in a damp nest. Additionally, all of the prior art two-piece gourds are slick on the inside.
Some “landlords” believe that purple martins prefer a nesting compartment with a darkened interior. While it is possible to paint the inside of a plastic gourd such those sold by Carroll Industries or Natureline with black paint this removes some of the advantage of using a plastic gourd, i.e., little or no maintenance other than nest clean out.
From the standpoint of a purple martin and from its “landlord,” a plastic gourd would ideally have a number of features: Non-slip interior, wide access port for nest checks and nest clean out, clip-on access cover so that a nest camera is easy to insert and good ventilation without wetting the nest. Other desirable features include easy assembly of the gourd, easy positioning of the gourd on a wire or mounting pole such that the ingress and egress hole faces an open flight path, choice of entrance hole shapes, optional black inner core and so forth. Up until now, no purple martin plastic gourd offered all these features, some features not at all and others not in combination.